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To all whose hearts are sad at the seeming loss 
of dear ones this book is dedicated with love 
and perfect understanding by its author whose 
every closest tie has been sundered by so-called 
death, and who, because of this, has spent years 
in learning the actual, proven truth about our 
dead. 



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Copyright, 1916 

By Lid a A. Churchill 

New York, N. Y. 



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I — Who Can Speak Truly of the Dead? 9 

II— What Forms Have They? 18 

III— Where Are They? 34 

IV — What Are Their Occupations and 

Recreations ? 44 

V — Do They Influence Us or We Them ? 56 

VI — Where Live the Ungodly ? 69 

VII— What Are the Lives of Children?. . 80 

VIII— What Does It All Mean? 91 



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OOES any one know the truth about our 
dead? Can statements which are not 
mere hopes, beliefs, speculations, the- 
ories founded on Bible passages which may 
be variously interpreted, communications, real 
or alleged, received through psychics — aside 
from all or any of these has any one told us, 
can any one tell us, the truth about our dead? 
Would it not be far more strange if noth- 
ing tangible and definite had been learned about 
the dead than if something had? Is it rea- 
sonable to suppose that in this matter which 
has always most deeply and universally con- 
cerned mankind, which most deeply and uni- 
versally concerns mankind now and must con- 
tinue to so concern it, that no searching, sen- 
sible research should be made, no adequate 
investigation instituted, no definite conclu- 
sions arrived at? 

Physical science has brought to our notice 
and made ready for our use many significant 
things, but nothing which ministers to man's 
physical needs or convenience can ever have 



10 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

one per cent of the significance of that which 
meets the clamors and cravings of his heart 
and soul. Always the life has been, always 
must be, "more than meat, and the body more 
than raiment." 

When the electric telegraph flashed its first 
message between Washington and Baltimore 
was there among the amazed and admiring 
ones a soul whose loved one had passed 
through "The Gate of Silence" whose heart 
would not have been more uplifted, could a 
sane, sensible, convincing message have come 
to him from that one? Sitting in the Liberal 
Arts Building at the Panama-Pacific Exposi- 
tion, with a telephone receiver at one's ear, 
it was thrilling to hear a man in New York 
tell a man in San Francisco the state of the 
eastern weather and the time of day. Who 
can deny that a thousand times more thrilling 
would have been "the sound of a voice that is 
still," or the report of one who could have 
given, coherently and convincingly, what that 
voice had bidden him say? Watching the boy 
aviator, "Art" Smith, mount almost out of 
sight in his bird-like car, one exulted that the 
air currents had come to be held in man's 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 11 

hand like a bridle, and the winds to be har- 
nessed as steeds. One can easily conceive that 
ecstasy would have replaced exultation could 
those flights have assured one on credible au- 
thority that in those ether spaces were real 
planes, real homes for real people living in 
real ways. 

With hearts of earlier decades torn, as 
some are torn now, by the blasphemous doc- 
trine of an everlasting burning hell, with lives 
stultified, stagnated, benumbed by doubt and 
dread concerning the hereafter, with existence 
rent and tortured by anxieties which only pos- 
itive knowledge could lessen or destroy and 
only credible information could relieve, the 
wonder is not that real and definite knowledge 
should be demanded, but that it was not de- 
manded and secured long ago. 

The truth about our dead has now been 
sought and found : not guesses or deductions, 
but the real truth; not theories about the dead, 
but experiences among them; not faith about 
their world, but observances of it. 

By whom has this truth, these experiences, 
these observations been obtained ? Not wholly 
or mostly through Spiritualists, though Spirit- 



12 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

ualism has rendered an inestimable service to 
the world by its proofs that our dead are far 
more vividly alive in their new state than they 
were in the old, but by such unimpeachable 
and thorough experimenters and investigators 
as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, Sir 
Alfred Russell Wallace, William T. Stead and 
many less known but equally reliable persons. 

Just as there is, as St. Paul declares, a nat- 
ural, or physical, body and a spiritual body, 
so there is a physical science and a spiritual 
science, the one dealing, very largely, with 
things physically seen, the other with things 
spiritually seen. And the things spiritually 
seen are just as real, just as inevitably gov- 
erned by law, just as certain in action, just as 
natural as the things seen physically. 

Through an understanding of occult laws 
and scientific development of soul powers, 
such as unerring clarivoyance and claraudi- 
ence, and the ability to function consciously 
on several planes of existence, a number of 
people, small in comparison but large in the 
aggregate, have become as truly able to speak 
with confidence of the realms of the so-called 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 13 

dead as is the physical scientist to speak with 
confidence of the realms of nature. 

May one believe their verdict, put faith in 
their findings? If they are people whose lives, 
practices and knowledge command respect, 
who are known to be of sane mind and sound 
judgment, whose word one could not hesitate 
to take on any subject of the physical world, 
is not one bound by all fairness and common- 
sense to believe their wholly sensible and com- 
prehensible statements about their investiga- 
tions and observances of the spiritual world? 

The conservatism of Science, its refusal td 
admit the truth of anything not absolutely 
proven, is well known. The foremost living 
scientist, Sir Oliver Lodge, openly declares 
that he knows there is another life after the 
physical, which is lived in an actual place, and 
that this place has been visited, investigated 
and reported upon by people still living in 
physical bodies: a decision in which he is 
joined by his famous and fully-trusted com- 
peers, Sir Alfred Russell Wallace — who be- 
came convinced of the truth of these state- 
ments by experiments made to disprove them 
— and Sir William Crookes. 



14 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

■ - 

By millions to one the human race accepts 
the verdict of Science about myriads of things 
when it cannot possibly prove this verdict true 
and which to its senses seems utterly false. 
The Earth appears flat and immeasurably 
larger than any star we can see. Science tells 
us that it is round and, compared to most of 
the planets, is as an apple seed to the apple. 
Our senses declare that we see all objects right 
side up. Science assures us that we see all 
(things inverted, but that the brain instantane- 
ously corrects this impression. We seem to 
jlrink clear water. Science pronounces it 
filled with thousands of forms of life. The 
Statements made by the scientists named and 
by those whom they recognize as actual and 
honest other-sphere investigators are to any 
open mind and reasoning brain far more com- 
prehensible and easy of acceptance than the 
verdicts cited and thousands of others. The 
belief in these investigators is greatly strength- 
ened by the knowledge that for their prodig- 
ious labors they gain neither money nor pres- 
tige, and by the fact that in some groups, at 
least, in which several of them are banded 
together for this work their findings are never 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 15 

accepted as conclusive unless three of them, 
working entirely apart and without consulta- 
tion with each other, render to the person ap- 
pointed to receive them verdicts which agree 
in all their main features, differing only in 
minor points, as three people might differ in 
their estimates of Boston, Berlin and Paris: 
differences in points of view which prove the 
absence of collusion. 

These investigators are not recluses living 
in caves or inaccessible places. While a few 
students are working with teachers in such 
centers as the Great White Lodge of the Him- 
alayas, far more are mingling with their fel- 
lows, engaged in different occupations (some 
of them very humble), for the most part un- 
known as investigators, and giving out their 
knowledge in discreet ways where they know 
it is craved and they believe will not be "trod- 
den under foot" or used for selfish purposes. 
This knowledge is in no way supernatural and 
may be gained by any one of purity of mind, 
body and purpose, and with the patience, prac- 
tice and persistence cultivated by these inves- 
tigators, who are out of the normal only be- 
cause, knowing the relative value of "things 



16 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

temporal and things spiritual, "they cease to 
strive for the one and lay hold of the other, 
and are far less selfish in their dealings than 
is less understanding humanity. 

Feeling the great universal desire and de- 
mand of a groping, bewildered, heart-aching 
world, they have ofifered up their own earthly 
enrichment, and in many cases their material 
comfort, that they may help to secure mental, 
moral and spiritual enrichment and comfort 
for those who are seldom aware of their ex- 
istence. One investigator, who is openly 
known and universally trusted, relinquished 
his profession of attorney to devote his life 
to this work. In consequence he has some- 
times been in absolute want. During the last 
ten years he has written over thirty thousand 
letters to inquiring men and women, and has, 
in a large majority of cases, received not even 
a postage stamp as recompense. 

Occasionally one meets an untrained per- 
son with level head and practical mind who 
tells of personal experiences, under special 
conditions, while out of the physical body. 
One such is a New York dressmaker who 
without ever having been taught that such 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 17 

things were possible, made visits and observa- 
tions which absolutely agree with the reports 
of trained investigators. 

That except under unusual conditions un- 
trained eyes cannot see other worlds and their 
inhabitants is no proof that such worlds and 
inhabitants do not exist. The telescope and 
other scientific instruments are constantly dis- 
covering objects in the heavens and on the 
earth which only by the use of such instru- 
ments would be revealed. Our physical eyes 
respond to a very small part of the undula- 
tions, or vibrations, of even the physical 
realm in which we live. It is easy to under- 
stand that it is impossible for them to respond 
to the far finer and higher undulations, or vi- 
brations, which obtain in the more rarified 
matter and infinitely finer atmosphere of the 
spiritual planes. 



II 

"fc^ AVE you ever seen a ghost ?" was 
JLJJ asked of David Warfield, whose mas- 
terly production of "The Return of 
Peter Grimm" had called out the question. 

"A ghost?" answered Mr. Warfield. "No! 
And I hope I never shall. It would frighten 
me terribly if I did. But my father, who died 
several years ago, often comes and sits at the 
table with me." 

"I forget that mother is gone," said a 
healthy, cheerful young woman. "She is so 
often with me, and we talk and laugh and plan 
just as we used to." 

"Whenever I am in trouble with my affairs 
my father comes and advises me," said a well- 
known professor of psychology. 

"Mother is often here with me. I love to 
have her about, she looks so natural and 
makes everything seem so homelike," said a 
man who for some years had charge of a 
pumping-station near Boston, and who for 
hours each day was alone in his engine room ; 
a man who never read anything but newspa- 
pers and an occasional book or article about 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 19 

machinery, and who would not have known 
what the term psychic meant. 

"Our minds do surely play us uncanny 
tricks, ,, said a young man who believed, or 
tried to believe, in annihilation. "Repeatedly 
I have seen what appears to be my father, 
looking and appearing just as he always did. 
One morning before I was up he came to my 
hotel room, dressed in his usual way and, 
with his newspaper and pipe, sat down in a 
chair, leaned back and crossed his knees just 
as I have seen him. do hundreds of times at 
home. I sat up in bed to be sure that I was 
awake — it was after sunrise — and looked at 
the figure for fully five minutes. I turned my 
head to speak to my brother, who was asleep 
on a couch in the same room, and when I 
again looked for the figure it was gone." 

"Did you speak to it?" was asked. 

"Of course not !" was the answer. "I knew 
it was a delusion. My father had been dead 
a number of years. But in figure, face and 
pose it was exactly like his earthly self!' 

In no other line have there been more con- 
scientious, thorough and never-ceasing tests 
and investigations than in those which have 
sought to disprove or prove the continuance 



20 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

of life after physical existence and the impos- 
sibility or possibility of communion with those 
who have cast off their physical bodies: tests 
and investigations carried on by scientists, 
scholars, professional men and laymen, hon- 
est, conscientious and thorough workers bound 
to have the real truth. 

In the face of these tests and investigations 
and what they have established it is as ab- 
surd to assert that the so-called dead do not 
survive and do not sometimes return as it 
would be to declare that they were never born 
and have never passed on from this life. 

Dr. Richard Hodgson, late President of the 
Society for Psychical Research, began his in- 
vestigations of psychical phenomena with a 
decided belief they were all caused by physical 
means and manipulations. The more deeply 
he explored, the longer he experimented, and 
in spite of the numberless fakeries and frauds 
which he brought to light — as is the case with 
every investigator — the more utterly did he 
become convinced that the so-called dead are 
the vitally-living, and that, under special con- 
ditions, they may, and do, communicate with 
dwellers on the earth. 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 21 

The fair-minded person must admit that a 
future life is as surely proved as is the exist- 
ence of oxygen in air or hydrogen in water, 
and that while thousands of manufactured 
messages are given forth, it is equally true 
that thousands of genuine ones are received. 

The three most significant and precious 
facts established by the classes named, and, to 
the ordinary mind most surely of all, by such 
witnesses as are quoted at the head of this 
chapter, are these : 

Our so-called dead really live. 

They live as their own natural selves in 
natural bodies. 

They keep their natural love for and inter- 
est in their families and friends. 

It was no ghost or wraith or misty, moon- 
shiny something that came to David Warfield, 
that visited the young woman in her home, 
that sought the engineer in his pumping-sta- 
tion, that appeared to the son in his hotel 
apartment ; not ghost nor mist nor moonshine 
that has, according to testimony too often re- 
peated and from too widely scattered sources 
to be always false or mistaken, come to thou- 
sands of others, but the real father, mother, 
sister, brother, child, lover or friend, the very 



22 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

dear ones themselves who lived and loved and 
worked and hoped and suffered with us here; 
not something changed out of all recognition 
by casting off the physical body, but our very 
own with the same atmosphere and ways, the 
same turns of expression and characteristic 
tones and gestures. 

They sometimes assume habits and gar- 
ments which were theirs here, but which do not 
obtain in their present world, for purposes of 
identification, as did the young man's father, 
who, garbed in the old way, sat in his favorite 
attitude, pipe in mouth and newspaper in 
hand. 

We are coming in these latter days to 
know something of the shaping and building 
power of thought; to know that, working in 
the plastic ether, it forms actual and perfect 
designs. During the last few years several in- 
struments have been devised which show the 
exact forms caused by sound vibrations and 
some which demonstate that a real image is 
created by thought without speech. One of 
these instruments is a camera invented by the 
late Dr. J. Mount Bleyer, of New York, as- 
sisted by Mr. K. L. Dickson, ex-photograpic 
expert of Edison's Laboratory, which pro- 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 23 

duces, at the rate of one hundred a second, 
the exact forms caused by the voice in speak- 
ing or singing, thus proving that every men* 
tality brings forth "according to its kind." 

The picture caused by a sharp, disagreeable 
voice is that of a snake coiled to strike. Soft, 
loving tones make lovely images, such as beau- 
tiful flowers. The singing by a sympathetic 
voice of "Home, Sweet Home" displays upon 
the screen "marvellously pretty submarine 
vegetation intermingled with reefs and spidery 
forms, orchids and other plants, and tracings 
in new and strange patterns." 

These experiments and many others which 
prove that "thoughts are things" and literally 
result in visible objects are entirely corrobora- 
tive of the testimony of physical scientists who 
have turned their attention to other-world 
matters and that of our other-sphere obser- 
vers who assure us that the exceedingly fine, 
plastic and impressionable ether-stuff of the 
planes outside our own may readily be shaped 
by thought to garments, homes, articles for 
any and every kind of use. How easy and 
natural, then, the reproduction of the familiar 
suit and the once habitual pipe and news- 
paper, that no stranger in a strange garb 



24 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

might confront the son, but his easily recog- 
nizable vtry own father. 

"Our friend Rene is gone," said a lady 
sometime ago to her housemate. "Her sister 
May, looking exactly as she used to look be- 
fore her last illness, and dressed in that soft 
gray silk she used to wear, came to me just as 
I awoke and told me that Rene went at six 
this morning." The answer to a telegram sent 
to the house of this mutual friend confirmed 
the statement that Rene had died that morning 
at six. 

The doubting son called the appearance to 
him a hallucination ; sceptical friends declared 
the coming of the dead girl's sister May a 
dream that "happened" to state a fact. Is it 
not far easier and more reasonable to believe 
that a father, naturally pained and made anx- 
ious by his son's disbelief in a future life and 
eager to convince him of his mistake, should, 
as the strongest proof of what he desired to 
convey, come to him as his own unmistakable 
self than that a healthy, normal, clear-brained 
young man should, in broad daylight, con- 
jure up such a vision? Is it not as difficult 
to comprehend that one appearing in every 
particular as she did in earthly life should go 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 25 

in a dream to the friend of her sister and 
herself and give such accurate and quickly 
verifiable information as that she should go to 
her friend in her spirit body and tell her what 
had occurred ? Is it not more difficult and more 
unreasonable to believe that the investigators 
with their different viewpoints and modes of 
procedure, the witnesses of all civilized races, 
classes, colors, creeds and ages, have each and 
all been utterly mistaken than to believe that 
our so-called dead are our vitally-alive, wear- 
ing bodies and living lives which are as natural 
to their new world and its atmosphere and 
surroundings as were their earthly bodies and 
lives to this earth and its atmosphere? 

How entirly without supernatural or un- 
natural elements was the appearance of Jesus 
to Mary and His disciples. Without phe- 
nomena, without any undue happenings, He 
was there, the Lord they loved, the Master 
they mourned as being far away in some un- 
natural body and unnatural place. Warm, 
living, just Himself, there He was, with just 
His dear ways and wise words, bidding the 
doubting Thomas, who probably thought that 
the real appearance of the loved one was too 
good to be true, handle Him, thrust his hands 



26 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

into the wound made by the spear — and early 
and notable instance of assuming a former 
condition for sure identification — that he might 
be convinced that here was no deception or 
hallucination. How sensible, how reasonable, 
how natural it all was! 

How sensible, how reasonable, how natural 
it is to decide that the Great Intelligence, the 
Great Wisdom, the Great Love we call God 
would not, after, by millions of years' pro- 
cesses, bringing a bit of shapeless, seemingly 
lifeless protoplasm up to a big-brained, intel- 
lectually-minded, spiritually-informed man, 
end the evolutionary process by a meaningless 
crash of annihilation, but would raise His 
creation, body by body, world by world, to 
higher and higher expression until it became 
what He evidently intended it to be : His own 
veritable image and likeness ! Nowhere among 
the earth processes or among the great swing- 
ing worlds above is known or indicated waste, 
disorder or lack of law. How then can the 
thinking mind or reasoning brain conceive of 
such waste, disorder or lack of law as would 
be predicated by the destruction, at a compara- 
tively early stage of its development, of the 
noblest and most intricate creation of all the 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 27 

worlds ! How unnaturally would Infinite Wis- 
dom permit this to be! 

The truth is, our going out of human life 
is just as natural, and not one shade more 
wonderful, than our coming into it. Our 
having other and better bodies in another and 
better world is just as natural, and nothing 
more amazing, than that the man of today 
should have a better body and a more desir- 
able dwelling place than did the cave dweller 
of ages ago. The inevitably-natural and 
naturally-inevitable trend of all things, man 
included, is, as everything in Nature shows, 
upward, forward, onward. Strange indeed if 
man must miss his part and be balked of his 
full evolvment in this great plan ! 

And those natural, sensible bodies, not mist 
nor moonshine nor abstract mind, but real 
bodies, what are they like? We are assured 
by those who know that they are, or grow to 
be, just replicas of the earthly bodies when 
those bodies were at their zenith of growth, 
beauty, vigor and grace : bodies with every 
defect, defacement and disease eliminated. In 
throwing off the earth body one discards all 
deformities, decays and hindrances which are 
characteristic of this "Sorrowful Star" but 



28 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

not of the higher spheres. The earth body 
is the sculptor's rough model; the spiritual 
body is the statue. 

"Shall I know mother ?" "What will my 
husband, my wife, my baby, my brother, my 
sister, my friend be like?" are questions of- 
ten asked. They will every one be like them- 
selves because they will be themselves; their 
vital, vigorous selves, the spirit selves which 
made them what you knew and loved. There 
will be no shade meeting shade, no drifting 
together of mist and mist, no mingling of un- 
formed mind with mind, but real people meet- 
ing real people, the warm handshake, the ten- 
der embrace, the tears of joy, the laugh of 
pleasure; the natural meeting and intercourse 
of natural relatives and friends in n&tural, 
though different, bodies. Those who want to 
be angel, and "with the angels stand" will 
have their wish, but unless they have learned 
the real truth about angels, and expect to see 
extraordinary beings with wings and crowns 
and harps, they will be utterly disappointed — 
most pleasantly and agreeably disappointed 
probably. They will learn that angel means 
messenger, and that angels are men, women 
and children who in that sphere do the works 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 29 

of God, give help, comfort and succor, as 
many a soul does here. An ancient song 
speaks of "the angel in the old gray shawl," 
and an angel, many of whom walk the earth, 
may just as surely, and far more naturally, ap- 
pear in an old gray shawl as in misty robes 
and with wings and a harp. As even in this 
world of dense and heavy matter the clean, 
white, loving, serving soul makes the face to 
shine with spiritual beauty breaking through, 
so in that infinitely finer-ethered and far more 
tenuous atmosphere the angels, loving, serv- 
ing, succoring men, women and youths, do 
take on a shining quality, a luminous appear- 
ance, which, as they advance in spiritual devel- 
opment and rise from plane to plane, does 
give them a wonderfully beautiful glow of 
body, countenance and expression, but does 
not make them supernatural or unnatural or 
less than or unlike our very own and their 
very real selves. 

And why may we not see and talk with 
them? Nearly every adult person and many 
a child, by some experience of his own or 
that of others, has proved to his private satis- 
faction that we do sometimes see and talk 
with them. Many hold the belief that the time 



30 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

is not far distant when the veils between the 
living and the so-called dead will be entirely 
removed and the different spheres become 
one, as adjoining towns are a part of one 
State. "I look forward to the time," said the 
late Mary A. Livermore, "when one will be 
no more surprised or dismayed to meet on the 
street, or in his home, or any other place, one 
who has cast off the physical body than he is 
now surprised or dismayed to meet an earthly 
friend in any of these places. One meeting 
and recognition will be as natural as the 
other." 

On what grounds does one base such a be- 
lief? 

We may note that in every case on record 
where the living and the so-called dead have 
consciously met that the former has been in 
a state which in some measure set him free 
from physical dominion and depression and so 
placed him in a swifter vibratory mental at- 
mosphere. These mutually conscious meet- 
ings usually occur in early morning, during 
the twilight or night, or when one is lost in 
revery; in brief, when the dense physical vi- 
brations of the brain caused by the mental 
burdens and soul-benumbing cares of our 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 31 

slow-vibrating earthly sphere are in a con- 
siderable degree released, or relaxed, thus al- 
lowing the radiations of the earth plane, rid 
of their usual heavy pressure, to become 
higher and swifter, and so able to come into 
tune, vibrate with, the fine, high, swift radi- 
ations, or vibrations, of those in the spirit 
realm. For the time the obstructing earth 
curtain is rolled aside, and, as a heavy shade 
pushed from across a window lets in the 
light, the removed obstruction of dense mat- 
ter makes possible clear seeing, or what is 
generally known as clarivoyance. 

Sometimes a person has claraudience, or 
clear hearing, and not clarivoyance. Others 
have both. It is all a question of stilling the 
earth clamor, of throwing off the caking earth 
clay and clogging earth mould which those 
bright, fine, other-sphere vibrations, or radi- 
ations can no more penetrate or illumine than 
can the sun's rays pierce and illumine the sods 
of the field or the clods of the swamp. 

Those who have become recognized as true 
seers — of past ages or of this age — prophesy- 
ing truly of events and conditions to come in 
the seen and unseen spheres, to whom one 
plane of action is as real, as actual, as natural 



32 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

and as familiar as another, to whom the quick 
and the dead are all vitally-alive beings — the 
so-called dead far more so than the acknowl- 
edged living — functioning in different spheres, 
these seers are those who, though many of 
them are engaged in ordinary vocations, have, 
by years of prayer, meditation, self-denial and 
service to mankind, freed themselves, body, 
soul and spirit, and are today as surely as they 
ever will be living in a spirit world, vibrating 
with spirit intelligences, seeing spirit-bodies 
and speaking with spirit friends at will. For 
them the veils are already rent in twain. They 
are earthly angels with heavenly vision and 
privileges. 

A fact which is being thrust upon the notice 
of even the ordinarily unnoticing and unthink- 
ing is that, in spite of wars and strife and many 
other deplored conditions; partly, indeed, be- 
cause of these things which break up the sloth 
and dredge the mud-inertia of lust and greed 
and selfishness which have so deadened and 
darkened the world that the God vibrations 
have been able to illumine it only occasionally 
and to shallow depths, the present age is lit- 
erally finding out that godliness is a condition 
not a theory, and the only condition that the 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 33 

sensible soul can make its permanent one and 
be physically, morally and spiritually safe, 
sane and happy. The scum of degradation is 
being thrown to the surface and by the always 
adequate Hand of God skimmed off and put 
again into the simmering pot of evolution to 
come forth a strained and useful thing. 

More rapid strides in spiritual development 
and towards mastership are being made now 
than ever before on our planet, and hence there 
is less and less density of brain and clogging 
of spiritual pores, and so more possibility and 
actuality of communion — not through paid 
psychics but face-to-face— with the dwellers 
in other and more ethereal spheres. In Just 
the degree that we can come into tune with 
the radiations of our so-called dead, blend into 
their spirit-tones, can we come into actual 
communion with them. When we have a re- 
deemed earth — and that we shall have one is 
no mere wish, hope or vision but a fact to 
which all common-sense as well as all pro- 
phecy points — there will be, for those who go 
and those who stay, no dying and no death, 
but the glad and conscious passing from a 
good state to a better. 



III. 

OUR dead not being mist, moonshine or 
unformed mind, but vitally, tangibly, 
naturally-alive people, must live some- 
where, and as naturally must live in places and 
ways which befit their new lives. One of the 
most comforting assurances that we receive 
from our investigators is that they are not 
only in a real place but in a natural place, 
amid natural surroundings, living in natural 
ways. 

And it is only natural that this should be so. 
We are promised the desires of our hearts. 
Has any one ever desired to leave the warm, 
vivid, colorful earth, even with all it s sick- 
nesses, sorrows and disappointments, to enter 
a place of jasper walls, gates of pearl and 
gold-paved streets where he will stand forever 
playing a harp and praising a Deity seated on 
a marble throne? Did ever any one, deep 
down in his heart, believe that such things 
could be ? If he did thus believe would he not 
sympathize with the little girl in "Gates Ajar" 
who, in consternation at the idea of such a 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 35 

heaven, asked her mother if she were a good 
girl if she did not think that God would allow 
her to go down to hell Saturday afternoons 
and play ? When the writer was a small child 
and the victim of the old-fashioned Sabbath 
on which it was considered wicked for chil- 
dren to play or to act in any natural way on 
the "Lord's Day," she used to hear her elders 
sing a hymn that sent the cold shivers down 
her back and dread to her heart. It spoke of 
a place where 

"Congregations ne'er break up and Sabbaths 
have no end." 

Three views which common-sense and rea- 
son suggest our probing scientists and other- 
sphere explorers pronounce the only true ones 
to adopt : 

Death, so-called, is just as natural as birth, 
and is simply a transition to another plane and 
somewhat changed mode of existence. 

That plane is as really a tangible place, with 
as real and tangible modes and means of living, 
as is the earth. 

To those who are on it that plane is as real 
and substantial and fitted to their needs as is 
the earth substantial and fitted to the needs of 
those who dwell upon it. 



36 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

Because two places are different it does not 
follow that either is unnatural. Each winter 
the State of Maine is covered by snow and 
swept by icy winds while California's grass is 
green and her breezes balmy. No one would 
declare that either State was unnatural. They 
are simply different, and the disbelief of any 
one that this condition of things was true 
would not make it untrue. 

When Jesus told His disciples that He was 
going to prepare a "place" for them and spoke 
of "many mansions" in his Father's house He 
was not speaking allegorically but of actually 
existing things. To prove the reality of this 
and of the entire reasonableness of the state- 
ments of our investigators physical science has 
now put its stamp of truth upon both. 

It has been the custom of those who "sit in 
the seat of the scornful/' those who believe, or 
pretend to believe, that death ends all, those 
sad and wistful ones who would so gladly be- 
lieve but know not how or what to believe — it 
has been the custom of all these as well as of 
those who reason of the matter not at all, to 
regard and to speak of our planet as the "solid 
earth," and to believe that because the dead 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 37 

have left this solidity and have gone, if any- 
where, to realms of ethereal matter, that they 
cannot live in any real bodies or real places or 
have any real existence. When the compara- 
tively few taught and comprehending ones 
state the real facts of the case they are largely 
met by open incredulity, the doubts of those 
who dare not believe, or the cynical demand 
to be "shown" sensible reasons for belief in 
the statements made. 

And it is a natural, proper and valuable 
thing for humanity that the world at large 
should be "shown" that that which it has 
scorned to believe, or longed and failed to be- 
lieve, or demanded proof of before it would 
believe is sane, sensible, certain, above all 
natural. 

A fact which startles the believing, the unbe- 
lieving and the would-be believing alike is put 
forth and attested by such eminent scientists 
as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir Norman Lockyer, J. 
J. Thomson, Professor Osborne Reynolds and 
many other equally reliable investigators: the 
fact that in all the universe there is no solid 
earth; that there is not anyzvhere solid, or in- 
divisible, matter; that there is "nothing but 



38 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

ether waves" of atoms in more or less rapid 
motion which assume a greater or less degree 
of density, or apparent solidity, according to 
the rate at which they are vibrating and the 
positions in which they are thrown. 

The summer whirlwind will illustrate this 
point. Toward a center which acts as a mag- 
net are drawn, in circling waves, leaves, sticks, 
stones and grains of sand, which are packed 
by the power of the central force into a more 
or less dense, or solid, mass. A less powerful 
center magnet causes less leaves and smaller 
sticks, stones and grains of sand to gather in 
a looser, less compact, and hence less dense, 
and more diffused mass. 

This whirlwind is a miniature making of 
worlds, all worlds, from out tiny Earth to 
enormous Jupiter and every star that spins in 
space, and, according to those same great sci- 
entists, of everything, from the smallest mote 
in the air or the tiniest fish in the sea to man, 
of everything in this world and all worlds. 
Put very simply the facts are these : 

There is only one substance out of which 
to make anything or anybody. This Universal 
Substance is called by Sir William Crookes 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 39 

"Protyle," by other scientists other names. 
Those who have investigated most deeply and 
by means of spiritual science call it simply 
God or Spirit. By His own power and out of 
His own substance, always by a central mag- 
netic force which draws different expressions 
of substance together, everything and every- 
body, large and small, is brought into its pres- 
ent shape. And no thing, and no body — the 
grain of sand or the moutain, the drop of 
water or the sea, the tiniest ant or the man — 
is ever in a fixed, or solid, state, but all its 
component parts, atoms, molecules, are bits of 
ether moving in ether, changing, dividing, 
coalescing, never still, always in such rapid 
motion that often there seems to be negation, 
or entire absence of motion. 

The whirlwind which has the most rapid 
motion at the center, and so causes the most 
rapid circular motion, will always draw the 
largest leaves, sticks, stones and grains of 
sand, and pile them most thickly and compact- 
ly, thus making by the position of its parts the 
most dense, or seemingly solid, substance. The 
whirlwind which has as a center a less power- 
ful magnet and a correspondingly less power- 



40 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

ful circular movement, results in a less com- 
pact, or seemingly solid, substance. Just so on 
this earthly plane, where the great play of Ev- 
olution is in progress, where the physical, 
moral and spiritual sinews are strained to the 
utmost by constantly pulling against oppos- 
ing currents, greater density, or solidity, is re- 
quired for the operations going on in dense 
bodies than is necessary for the operation of 
forces and the functioning of bodies of infin- 
itely lighter texture and the far more facile 
working out of ordained purposes. In brief, 
the common-sense and the best science of the 
entire world postulate and substantiate the 
truth that in an ordered universe governed by 
Supreme Intelligence and immutable Law that 
men live in bodies and in worlds appropriate 
to the plan which they are working out, and 
one body and one world is just as natural as 
another, and does not become supernatural or 
abnormal because it is different from other 
bodies and worlds. Every world, say both 
physical and spiritual science, is an ethereal 
world — formed, with all that it contains of 
ether — every body an etherial body. We are 
each in eternity, which is simply continuing 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 41 

time, or absence of time, as much now as we 
ever shall be. Death is another and more ad- 
vanced phase of life, and one is as natural as 
the other. On no plane can we escape Law, 
which is simply God in action. 

And where are these other worlds, or 
planes ? 

Just as there are the primary school, the 
grammar school, the high school, the college 
and the university, and different grades in 
each, to meet the needs of the unfolding and 
expanding of the differently evolving intel- 
lects, so there are worlds and different planes 
of each to meet the needs of differently un- 
folding and expanding souls. And just as the 
pupil enters the school and the grade of the 
school for which he is prepared by his pre- 
vious efforts and attainments, so do those 
who pass away from the grossest and densest 
plane, which is the one on which we now 
live, go to those planes for which their earth- 
ly desires, efforts and attainments make them 
eligible. 

The plane to which the vast majority of 
people go when they leave this physical 
earth is not away off in space, as we were 



43 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

formerly taught, but just outside and around 
us, mingling with our world as mist mingles 
with rain ; merely a far more refined plane of 
this world, which, because of the clear, vivid, 
shining atmosphere of its upper strata, is 
largely known as the Astral — starry — World, 
which is the Purgatory of the Catholic; the 
place between this lower sphere and the more 
beautiful spheres beyond. 

And in this perfectly natural world are the 
perfectly natural things which belong to it: 
real homes for those who desire homes — for 
there as here there are "free lances" who 
crave no steady abiding place — on real streets 
or among real fields, shaded by real trees, over- 
looked by real mountains; with brooks and 
birds and shrubs and flowers, institutions of 
learning, libraries, places of recreation, every- 
thing which belongs to a beautiful, amply and 
adequately provided-for world. We might say 
that the vitality, beauty, joy and opportuni- 
ties of heaven are the vitality, beauty, joy and 
opportunities of earth immeasurably plused. 

Only such natural surroundings could sat- 
isfy our naturally-alive dead, and only natural 
surroundings and conditions could obtain un- 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 43 

der natural laws which never cease to govern 
on any plane where the soul, which is the real 
man, may have its existence. 



IV. 

Wijai Ar? STIj^tr tfrrupaftinui anil 
KerreatiiniB? 

iw^E must always remember that we are 
Vjy not dealing with supernatural or un- 
natural beings, but with those who are 
just as truly themselves as they ever were. A 
man is no more changed by putting off a dense 
body and appearing in an ethereal one than he 
is changed when he exchanges a heavy gar- 
ment for a light one. What, then, would nat- 
urally and, since there he is not hampered in 
his choice, almost inevitably be one's occupa- 
tion and recreation? 

During earth life comparatively few people 
are able to follow the dictates of their own 
hearts as to employment and diversion. To 
obtain money necessary to meet their own 
needs and perhaps the needs of those depend- 
ent upon them they labor at tasks which are 
far from being their chosen work. Many a 
man is following the plow who would like to 
follow the law, many a woman making gowns 
who would like to make poems, many a man 
painting houses who dreams of painting pic- 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 45 

tures. Think what it would mean were any- 
one of these set free from the necessity of 
earning a livelihood for himself or another 
and assured that he could choose what he 
would do and that the very best conditions and 
instructors would be provided for him, free. 
But it is almost invariably the case that one 
going out of physical environment does not 
immediately assume any occupation. On earth 
when a person is about to take up his abode 
and certain duties in a foreign land he is re- 
ceived and welcomed there by friends or some 
interested one, and devotes some time to re- 
laxation and in becoming accustomed to the 
country, its inhabitants and their ways. So in 
the astral world he is received by those who 
love him and have looked forward to his com- 
ing, or, in one of the very rare cases where he 
has no friends there, by loving and ministering 
"angels," service-giving men and women, and 
is made at home, put at ease, and gradually 
introduced to the scenery and initiated into 
the existing conditions and customs of his new 
abode. No one is ever allowed to enter that 
sphere unwelcomed, uncared for or unin- 
structed. 



46 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

Think what this change means to him, will 
mean to you. Think what it means to him, 
will mean to you, to be in a sphere infinitely 
more beautiful than the earth, amid surround- 
ings that meet every need, satisfy every artis- 
tic sense of fitness, and among those whose 
going out made life a desolation, and that 
without fear of death for them or for your- 
self ; where grinding care can no more lay hold 
upon one, where every craving of the heart for 
tender, answering love, for vivid, glorious life, 
for progress in the ways which have been so 
craved and always denied is there for the tak- 
ing; to be free with a splendid, full-blown 
freedom of body, mind and spirit, in a splen- 
did world of splendid privileges! Free to 
rest at first, as myriads do, especially after 
long years of toil at the heavy and often dis- 
tasteful tasks of earthly existence, and with 
the knowledge, in itself a rest, that nothing 
will be lacking to you or yours because of this 
pause and recuperation. Think what it means 
to our dead, what it will mean to us, to have 
love enough, vigor enough, opportunities 
enough, time enough, means enough, all things 
enough! And all natural things in a natural 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 47 

world among natural environment and with 
natural people! 

This is no picture of the imagination but ac- 
cording to the reports of actual investigators 
of actual conditions. 

The newcomer is perhaps among those who 
have ardently longed to travel and to see the 
beautiful places of the world, but who have 
lacked time and money for this purpose. Now 
he has plenty of time, and when he has learned 
the modes of locomotion entirely possible to 
him he can not only visit the lovely places of 
the earth, but, in due time and under condi- 
tions which he will learn to easily fulfil, the 
starry worlds in space. Maybe here is one who 
has starved for good music, never having had 
means to buy entrance to those places where 
it was to be heard or been in touch with any 
one who could gratify his longing. Now, 
without money and without price, he may have 
his fill of such music as no amount of money 
could have brought within reach on earth. If 
he has dreamed of the beautiful in Art which 
his work-filled days and unfilled purse have 
kept him from beholding, here he may, at leis- 
ure and with no deprivation dogging him in 



48 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

consequence, contemplate masterpieces which 
no earthly artist could ever have produced. He 
may read or study to his heart's content in 
magnificent libraries. He may have the privi- 
lege of witnessing such dramas as no earthly 
talent has ever produced. He may go to the 
halls of recreation where he may see for the 
first time the real "poetry of motion" in danc- 
ing such as is best exemplified here by artists 
like Pavlowa; dancing in which he may soon 
learn to take a graceful part, and where he 
may hear the actually care-free laugh which 
bubbles up from the actually care-free heart, 
may come to know genuine merriment and 
real joy. 

Dance, laugh, play, bubble over with merri- 
ment and joy in heaven? Surely! That is 
what heaven is for. What else could we ex- 
pect from natural people in a natural world 
with "every weight" cast aside ? It is a declar- 
ation of one of the great Masters of Wisdom 
- — one of those who have overcome all limi- 
tations and function as readily and consciously 
on one plane as another; who live for the 
help, enlightenment and evolution of their fel- 
ows — that to attain to mastership, to become 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 49 

one's best, to reach the place of utmost physi- 
cal, mental, moral and spiritual adequacy, one 
must have a sense of humor, a brain which 
can conceive humorous thoughts, a heart 
which takes freely and frequently to laughter. 
Would not a joy-bereft, laughless earth be 
simply a place of grim endurance? Would 
such a heaven deserve its name, or be a natu- 
ral place for natural people? 

And the capability for perception and en- 
joyment is a hundred per cent plused. Why is 
this so ? Because in that realm the spirit body 
is acting on its own plane. The astral world, 
the plane just beyond the earth plane, really 
a finer and higher part of our earth, is the 
plane of the emotions. Rid of the clogging 
earth body and the dense earth brain, in a 
world whose high, fine ether pulsations, or vi- 
brations, give it an intensely vital and vivid at- 
mosphere and colors and shades — many of 
which are never seen on this plane — of palpi- 
tating hues and loveliness, vibrating in tune 
with all the encompassing vividness and 
beauty, the artist can conceive and paint, the 
musician compose and send forth, the actor 
dream and dramatize, every brain, heart and 



50 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

hand create and make manifest as it could 
never do in this only slightly flexible earth 
ether and clouded atmosphere. 

After a day of drudgery and numbing care 
we have each lain down so sluggish of brain 
and spent of body that no clear-cut thought or 
celerity of motion was possible to us. After a 
night's sleep and relaxation we have arisen 
with every brain cell aglow with vivid thought 
and a body "eager as a strong man to run a 
race." Even so do the released spirit brain 
and the relieved spirit body glow with won- 
derful conceptions and express themselves 
in significant creations, and with superlative 
pleasure and enthusiasm appreciate, under- 
stand and enjoy the productions of others. 

All along the line real people in real worlds 
are doing the real things which are in accord- 
ance with the laws of those worlds. 

There, as here, the great majority of people 
would find that while "all work and no play 
makes Jack a dull boy," that all play and 
no work would make a still duller boy and 
does not forward the soul in its evolution. 
There, as here, the vacation ended, the neces- 
sary or chosen rest-time done, souls long for 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 51 

work, reach out for accomplishment. And in 
that world, where desire melts into fulfillment 
as the bud merges into the flower, they find 
the work that is theirs, that expresses them. 

But in that sphere, even as here, there is a 
work far more needed than that of the artist, 
musician or poet, necessary and beautiful as 
are these, and the soul who comes to these 
realms already fitted by preference and prac- 
tice to do this work is the happiest of all and 
has by far the most beautiful appearance. 

Because of the ignorance which largely pre- 
vails concerning after-death conditions, or in 
consequence of the widespread false belief in 
an everlasting burning hell, thousands arrive 
on this plane sick with fear and dread which 
is often a more pitiable condition than the one 
left with their physical bodies. Then begins 
the work of those men and women who were 
the unrecognized "angels" of the earth sphere, 
whose delight and privilege it is to reassure, 
teach and explain the truth to these bewild- 
ered, mistaken ones, and to bring them not to 
their former state of poise, health and happi- 
ness, but to a realization of safety, vitality, 
joy and exhilaration such as they had never 



52 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

dreamed could exist. The happiest as well as 
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is, liter- 
ally and always, he who is man's most loving 
and unselfish servant. 

And for him who does not paint nor write 
nor make music nor act nor lean toward the 
teaching, comforting or succoring of his fel- 
lows ; who loves the sight of upturned soil, the 
presence of animals, the realization of grow- 
ing things ? He, too, will have his heart's de- 
sire, his very own chosen work. 

A woman who functions consciously on the 
astral plane was asked by a friend to find her 
father, a well known lawyer who had passed 
out some months before, and to report what 
his present occupation was. After some search 
the man was found but the psychic declared 
that she hesitated to tell her friend where she 
had discovered him and how he was employed. 
At last, however, she revealed to her the fact 
that she had looked for him in vain in those 
professional circles where a man of his calling 
would naturally be found and had discovered 
him in the midst of stretching green meadows 
on which fed an immense flock of sheep. 
"Ah !" exclaimed the friend. "The very thing 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 53 

he always wanted ! How often he used to say 
that his ideal life would be to have many acres 
of land and thousands of sheep/' 

A certain accomplished machinist was from 
boyhood occupied in plying his trade. Some 
months after he had put off his physical body 
a powerful unprofessional psychic told his sis- 
ter that she saw him with a very happy face 
and air of great enjoyment working in a large 
garden filled with beautiful flowers. The sis- 
ter declared that for years before going out 
he had thought, dreamed, talked of his hope 
that sometime he should own land and be able 
to cultivate growing things. 

Many are usefully and happily employed 
during more or less of their time building 
and rebuilding the homes in which they are to 
live, or do live, with those already arrived or 
for loved ones who are to come, and in beauti- 
fying and perfecting their grounds. 

We are told that although many things 
needed and used on earth are not needed or 
used there, that many other things natural to 
and required in that realm are there produced, 
thus giving scope and outlet for every type of 
mind and trend of accomplishment, making a 



54 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

world far more busy and diversified in its em- 
ployments, as well as its opportunities and en- 
joyments, than the earth. 

Unlike the earth the astral world bestows 
its bounties alike on the idle and the indus- 
trious, but it is he who lives upward and works 
onward who has the far more beautiful body, 
the far more vital life, and who goes by far 
the more rapidly from strength to strength, 
from glory to glory, from sphere to sphere, 
from power to greater power, from happiness 
to greater happiness. 

In those myriads of cases where through 
lack of opportunity and money one has been 
unable to fit himself to do well the work which 
his heart has chosen as his, he has there access 
to the most perfectly equipped schools in 
which, under the most zealous and advanced 
instructors, he may become a master workman 
in his own selected profession. 

It is no myth but a declaration full of ut- 
most significance and truth that "eye hath not 
seen, ear hath not heard, neither has it en- 
tered into the heart of man to conceive those 
things which God hath prepared for those 
who love Him." Experience and observation 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 55 

on every plane show that it is a literal and 
proven truth that "all things work together 
for good to those who love God," or Good. 




V. 

En Slipg Jtrftanir* lis ax Wt 2H?«tt? 

{INCE we are dealing with natural people 
living in a natural, though different, 
world, under natural, though in many 
respects different, conditions, and with laws 
which are natural to and adequate for these 
conditions, what must be the natural, indeed 
the inevitable, attitude of those who have 
passed on towards the dear ones they have left 
on the earth? Do those dear ones forget 
them? Do they not, on the contrary, where 
there are real soul ties between them, forget 
their every foible, disregard their every mis- 
take and love them with a fullness and in- 
tensity never known when both were on earth ? 
Obeying the natural law of the plane where 
the emotions, undeadened by heavy, physical 
vibrations, are in full expression, the other- 
world dwellers love their own far more in- 
tensely and vividly than they did here. 

And by "their own" is not meant just those 
who were related to them by family relations 
or marriage. It often occurs that a soul takes a 
body in and becomes a part of a family be- 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 57 



cause there he may learn the lesson, or lessons, 
that his present term of the earth-school is in- 
tended to teach — such as love, patience, for- 
bearance, diligence — but who has no affinity 
with that family, is not congenial with it or 
happy in it, is, indeed, a trial and a discipline 
to it: things which the family needed or they 
would not have been sent to it. In the astral 
world, where like, and only like, attracts like, 
that soul will never be drawn to or become a 
part of that family. Even here such a mem- 
ber of a family, when he becomes free to 
choose his own way and is able to earn his 
own livelihood, almost invariably drifts away 
from his connection with it, and becomes out- 
wardly what he has always been inwardly, 
practically its mere acquaintance. There he 
would never be more than an acquaintance. 

On the other hand, individuals by multiplied 
thousands have formed ties with seeming 
strangers whose lives melted into and mingled 
with their own as the dawn melts into and 
mingles with the sunrise, and between them 
an undying affection was born. 

In the one case the soul which came to a 
certain family merely to learn, and perhaps to 



58 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

give, a lesson is not that family's own any 
more than one who goes to a tailor to learn to 
fashion clothing thereby becomes his own. In 
the second case there is a harmony of vibra- 
tion and of soul-keynotes which complement 
and complete each other as do blue and orange. 
In such cases it is safe to conclude that the two 
•have in some former incarnation been very 
much to each other, and they will as naturally 
and inevitably be drawn together on other 
planes as are the magnet and iron filings. 
Whether they are together on the same plane 
or seemingly separated by death one is the 
other's very own. 

True affinity, of which the unholy sex at- 
traction which sometimes calls itself by this 
name is only a wicked masquerade, is the only 
condition of companionship and close asso- 
ciation in those after-world realms. Never 
fear that you will be troubled there by those 
who have made your life a torment here, or 
that you will miss close communion with those 
whose comradeship would alone go far toward 
making heaven for you. The desire of your 
heart, which you have been promised and 
will have, precludes the one and includes the 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 59 

other. It must, therefore, follow that fellow- 
ship there is a much more satisfactory and 
joyous thing than it ever is here, where at 
least some slight alien influence lessens its vol- 
ume and taints its flavor. 

A mistaken idea has been disseminated that 
on the other planes no special ties are recog- 
nized and no special groups arranged, but that 
all are in a conglomerate mass and "like unto 
the angels in heaven." We shall, indeed, as 
our greatest Teacher declared, be as the angels 
in heaven, who neither marry nor bear chil- 
dren, those useful, busy, happy men, women, 
and youths who are doing natural, needed 
things in a world which to be natural and un- 
der natural laws must have its home-centers, 
its different societies, its gatherings of con- 
genial friends, people of like interests congre- 
gating as surely as they do here for different 
serious objects and for entertainment and re- 
freshment. 

The influence of those on the other planes on 
the minds, lives and accomplishments of dwell- 
ers here is incalculable. The great pattern- 
world is there and from its prototypes, im- 
pressed upon the minds of men, come many of 



60 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

our wonderful inventions and marvelous con- 
structions. It is the desired and appointed work 
of some of the denizens of those after-worlds 
to watch over and aid in the management, de- 
velopment and evolution of this earthly realm. 
Any idea, ideal or purpose held strongly and 
steadily here is bound to draw more intensity 
and power from minds with similar ideas, 
ideals and purposes in those exceedingly re- 
sponsive planes. Frequently a great statesman 
here owes many of his ideas and the power 
which makes them potent to a great statesman 
there, one of those "ministering angels" who 
are literally and truly "given charge concern- 
ing him" and the well-being and the well-doing 
of his kind. Many a poet sings a sweeter song, 
many a writer strikes a stronger note, many a 
speaker wields a more dynamic influence than 
would have been possible but for the over- 
shadowing and inspiration of these same min- 
istering angels. Those who become the won- 
ders of the world in any line, benevolent or 
malevolent, are the mental and moral clearing- 
houses for many minds. One becomes respon- 
sible for the evil committed or the good done 
because it is his to originate the quality of 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 61 

the magnetic influence which invariably draws 
that which is like unto itself. 

Sometimes information is given, work out- 
lined, problems solved, questions settled by- 
first-hand interviews between the living and 
the so-called dead. In a large majority of 
cases every time one falls asleep he goes out 
in his astral body to the astral realms. His 
astral body being exactly like those which 
have been released by death and governed by 
the same laws, his intercourse with those on 
that plane is just as natural and free as is in- 
tercourse between two people in earthly 
bodies. The only difference between death 
and sleep is that in the former one goes out 
permanently, in the other temporarily from 
the physical body. In the case of a very slug- 
gish, unlonging, unimaginative nature the 
astral body usually hovers near the physical 
one during sleep, but few there are whose 
emotions, desires and attachments are not suf- 
ficiently keen to draw them away to some 
other sphere where loved and so-called lost 
ones abide. 

Only occasionally can the befogged physi- 
cal brain bring through clear memories of that 



62 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

astral world or of the experiences there, but 
often the information gained is sufficiently re- 
tained to be acted upon. Some years ago a 
young man teaching a mixed country school 
had pupils older than himself. On a certain 
day one of these pupils applied to him for help 
in solving a difficult problem in arithmetic. 
With dismay the young teacher realized that 
he had no idea how to work out the example. 
"Leave it with me/' he said, "and I will ex- 
plain it to you later in the day or tomorrow 
morning. ,, He took the example home and 
worked on it the entire evening without ob- 
taining the correct answer. He went to bed 
worn out, his last thought being, "O, Lord, 
show me how to work that example!" He 
awoke in the morning with the whole solution 
perfectly clear in his mind and returned the 
example to his student with the correct answer 
and a lucid explanation of how it was ob- 
tained. There was nothing unexplainable 
about this transaction. Just as the pupil had 
brought the problem to one who he believed 
could solve it, so the astral intelligence with 
its knowledge and remembrance of skilled in- 
tellects in the higher plane, took the example 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 63 

to one who could work it out and explain the 
process. One can best come to a conclusion 
concerning any matter when he has "slept 
over it," otherwise when the fog of the earth- 
brain is lifted and the clear unhampered spirit 
intelligence has had an opportunity to work, 
or when he has taken counsel with other clear 
and unhampered intelligences. 

While few remember the intercourse they 
have had during sleep with other-plane dwell- 
ers, often one who yesterday was discouraged 
and depressed feels in the morning cheered 
and strengthened and able to look life square- 
ly in the face and to go bravely and strongly 
on. 

Thus sleep has an important two- fold value : 
it gives the machinery of the body opportunity 
to rest and repair itself and the spirit man 
the inestimable privilege of consorting not 
only with those loved ones who have passed 
on, but with wise and helpful ones whose com- 
panionship and counsel are, though he is for 
the most part unconscious of this, of great 
benefit in his daily earth-life. To a vast num- 
ber of people who enter them after death these 
other-world spheres will not be strange, but 



64 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

like a land which one has many times visited, 
perhaps in which he has studied or worked, 
for not a few while still living here are taught 
there or take part in some of their various 
tasks. 

When the time comes, as many for strong 
reasons believe it will come, and that ere long, 
when each of us shall remember all our sleep 
experiences there will truly be for us no death. 
In the other world one remembers what occurs 
in this. One day he will remember in this 
world what occurs there. 

And are our departed ones always in touch 
with us, seeing us, realizing what we are feel- 
ing, thinking, doing? If so, are they not made 
unhappy by our trials and unhappinesses ? 

Would it be natural, or, if rationally viewed, 
conceivable that all of those departed ones 
should neglect the duties, the studies, the 
pleasures of their now very own legitimate 
sphere to constantly and habitually give their 
time and attention to this world, which, for 
the present at least, has ceased to be theirs? 
Just as sensibly and naturally would one who 
has entered the university turn back to con- 
stantly watch over and spend his time with 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 65 

his brother who was in the high school. Prob- 
ably with his higher understanding and more 
developed nature he loves his brother better 
than he ever did before. He never loses sight 
of him or interest in him. His joys and sor- 
rows affect him, and he will add to the one and 
relieve the other if he can. He looks forward 
happily to his entrance into the university, and 
will do all in his power to make that entrance 
pleasant and profitable. But, naturally, his 
own world and his own work claim him and 
the major part of his time and attention. 

So with our departed ones. Being in spirit 
bodies with spirit senses they see that which is 
naturally seen by their spirit sight, which is 
our spirit bodies. Being on the plane of pure, 
unhampered loving, their affection for us is 
purer, deeper, stronger than ever before, and 
they never forget or lose sight of us. Our 
sorrows and joys affect them, and they do all 
in their power to diminish the one and add to 
the other. They look forward with joy to our 
entrance into their world and will strive zeal- 
ously to make it pleasant and profitable to us. 
But just as it would be unnatural, unreason- 
able and selfish for the boy in high school to 



66 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

continually mourn that his brother was away 
from him, and so distract him by his grief or 
by constantly imploring him to come to him 
as to hinder his advancement and impede his 
accomplishment, so our sustained grieving and 
constant calling on our so-called dead for sym- 
pathy, advice and companionship cloud their 
happiness, retard their progress and impede 
their accomplishment in that place where now 
their legitimate duties and pleasures lie. 

They are tragically mistaken who think that 
by never-ceasing tears and lamentations and 
the wearing of sombre weeds they are show- 
ing love and loyalty to the mourned ones. All 
these things are torturing clogs to the other- 
wise free soul and should be done away with 
as selfish and harmful. Many a one who 
might be happily ascending towards higher 
spheres and engaging in superlative pleasures 
is held sorrowfully to earth by the, probably 
unconscious, selfishness of a weeping, demand- 
ing loved one. 

Moreover, grief and despondency make a 
heavy and murky atmosphere into which light 
and bright spirit entities cannot penetrate to 
give comfort and cheer, but which attracts the 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 67 

presence of those earth-bound ones whose 
depression adds to the already-existing gloom. 
Always and everywhere like attracts like. It 
was to the light-hearted young woman that the 
mother came to laugh and talk; the engine- 
room of the unmourning, tranquil son that the 
loved one made home; at the busy, unlament- 
ing actor's table that the father appeared. 
Thus for one's own sake as well as for that of 
his departed dear one he should put off grief 
and put on joy. 

And just as the student in the university 
loved to go, when he had the time, to visit his 
brother, so they love to come to us. After a 
time, as they go farther and farther on and 
become engrossed in more and more impor- 
tant tasks, they return less often to earth, but 
never reach a place where they lose sight of 
us or fail to meet us when we enter the higher 
realms. If it is in any way known that a 
troubled spirit haunts the earth it is always a 
kindness to learn what he desires done or ad- 
justed and to promise him that his wish shall 
be attended to, thus enabling him to go hap- 
pily on. 

The acute suffering which our departed 
loved ones, with their old love for us intensi- 



68 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

fied and their quick responsiveness to our 
emotions redoubled, would otherwise undergo 
is greatly modified by their clearer light and 
more comprehensive view which show them 
this earthly life as the quick passing of 
a troubled dream in which every soul is 
learning the lessons which make for his evo- 
lutionary progress and upliftment. They are 
calmed and comforted by the knowledge that 
St. Paul spoke only the actual and literal truth 
when he said: "Our light affliction which is 
but for a moment, worketh for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory." They 
want us to have the best, and they have come 
to know that lessons learned here, even 
through pain and suffering, will not have to 
be learned again, and that the sooner the "af- 
fliction" the sooner the "eternal weight of 
glory." 

Being just themselves, now lighter, finer, 
wiser, happier, still more true and loving 
selves, just our very own, as we are just their 
very own, they must, they do, constantly influ- 
ence us, as we must, we do, constantly influ- 
ence them. Hence our responsibility. 




VI. 
•Hljpr* 2Ittn> % UttgaMg? 

[5 a matter of fact there are, at the stage 
of evolution which we know, no really 
ungodly nor godly. A certain miller 
declared that in the thousands of bushels of 
corn he had ground he had never failed to 
find, in even the least sound kernel, a bit of 
golden pith. Going through a California gar- 
den two friends searched diligently, and 
searched in vain, for one absolutely perfect 
flower. 

So with human beings, until they have 
evolved to heights and reached worlds and 
spheres of worlds which are as real and natu- 
ral and as really under natural law and with 
as natural conditions and occupations as our 
earth, but with which we are not now con- 
cerned, there is not one who does not have 
some saving golden pith, not one who is abso- 
lutely perfect. The declaration that each one 
of us is a god in the making is as literally 
true as that the caterpillar is a butterfly in the 
making. 



70 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

When Jesus said, "It is not the will of your 
Father which is in heaven that one of these 
little ones should perish." He was speaking 
of the omnipotent Will, the always-operative 
Will which can never be balked or gainsaid. 

Three facts of immense importance which 
have come to us through our investigators 
are: 

There is no burning hell. 

There is no everlasting punishment. 

No soul can be forever lost. 

Does this mean that there are no effects of 
wrong-doing and that all are in the same con- 
dition and all alike happy after death? Far 
from it! Remember that the man who slips 
off his physical body is nowise changed by the 
act in his character, his thoughts, his desires 
any more than here the real you is changed by 
slipping off your outside garment. He whose 
life is coarse, low, vile does not gravitate 
towards the refined, the uplifted, the pure, nor 
is he allowed to enter their circle. This 
division and exclusion obtain even more com- 
pletely after death than before. Occasionally 
here a man of low type who has. obtained 
great worldly riches or an important position 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 71 

is, in spite of his obvious bad character, 
received into what is known as "good society." 
Not so there. In many passages of the 
Christian Bible people are declared to have 
died and gone to "their own place." In every 
sphere, including finally and sometime the 
earth sphere, this law that every one shall go 
to his own place holds good, and this not as a 
punishment of the Father whose will it is that 
"not one of these little ones should perish," 
but because, exercising the free will which 
places him apart from and beyond all others 
of the creations of God, he has indulged in 
thoughts and practices and contracted habits 
which make the abode and the company of 
those of similar thoughts, practices and habits 
his natural habitation and associates. "Birds 
of a fedder go mit demselves," declared the 
Dutchman. 

Always and everywhere like attracts like. 
In the after-death spheres, from the most in- 
glorious to the most inconceivably glorious, the 
law of affinity, which, rightly interpreted, is a 
correlative law of perfect justice, works with 
exact and never-failing precision. Here deceit 
and evasion are possible and often practiced. 



72 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR ^EAD 

Never there. The very appearance of the 
astral, or spiritual, body reveals one's char- 
acter and the natural place for him. And in 
that lower and lowest part of the astral realm 
the lower and lowest type of mankind will un- 
questionably suffer, not from literal flames, 
but from the cravings for drink, the clamor- 
ings of lust, the clutchings of greed for gold 
and many other insistent demands which can 
never be satisfied, and from the remorse which 
crime and cruelty and tyranny entail. As this 
astral realm is the plane where feeling and 
emotion have their superlatively vital expres- 
sion, it naturally follows that as those who go 
to the higher astral realms — and who outnum- 
ber by millions to one those whose places are 
in the lower spheres — enjoy their surround- 
ings and experiences with an intensity un- 
dreamed of here, so those in places of more 
or less torment suffer far more acutely than 
any earthly deprivation or remorse could have 
caused them to suffer. 

But this, though a real mental hell, is no 
place of everlasting bondage or punishment. 
"If I make my bed in hell/' says the psalmist, 
"behold thou art there." Aye verily! The 



thl. :ruth about our dead 73 

great omnipresent, omniscient, ever-loving 
Supreme Intelligence, call it by what name we 
may, which has decreed that that spark of 
Itself which every man is shall not perish but, 
sometime, somehow, somewhere, shall have 
everlasting life, does not forget or overlook 
the hells. Even here the crime-stained, the 
lust-wracked, the besotted man is in a more 
promising position than he was on the earth, 
where, in a large majority of cases, his 
weakened will did not prevent his continued 
indulgence in the things which made for de- 
moralization, and where any transient 
thought of reform or yearning toward better- 
ment met feeble, if any, response from those 
who had come to distrust him and to disbe- 
lieve in his desire for moral change. In the 
astral realms his unworthy demands meet 
with no supply and so are gradually worn out, 
and the first glimmer of repentance, the faint- 
est spark of upward inspiration, is known to 
those helpers, the real angels, who constantly 
go down to these denser astral spaces and 
work as diligently, and far more lovingly and 
intelligently — since they have a much clearer 
knowledge of the exact state of things and 



74 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

far finer facilities for reaching the heart and 
understanding of those they would assist — as 
do the zealous slum workers in our cities. 

Here untold numbers of those vital, shin- 
ing "angels" of the higher spheres find fre- 
quent employment, and a "great host who no 
man can number" are now rejoicing in the 
high upper spheres who were lured by love 
from those murkiest depths into which the 
very vitality and intensity of their natures 
which raised them so rapidly to great heights 
pulled them swiftly down. There, as here, the 
greatest saint is ever the greatest potential sin- 
ner with his significance, his vitality, his re- 
sponsiveness to atmosphere and attraction, 
turned upward. 

In a higher, less murky plane of the astral 
world are the "neither hot nor cold" ones who 
have not committed serious offences nor done 
any special good ; who have, perhaps, been in- 
terested only in dress, cards, plays, dances, but 
whose minds and hands have never vigorously 
taken hold of any work whose object was for 
the help, betterment or comforting of man- 
kind. Their own place is a negative one which 
most of them find very monotonous. But, 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 75 

like those in the lower realm, they can, by 
choosing and seeking for rational service and 
employment and higher forms of entertain- 
ment, lift themselves out of this drab environ- 
ment and become enthused with vivid, change- 
ful lives and possessors of shining bodies and 
raiment. 

Though one may linger, always by his own 
will or lack of will, many years in these lower 
regions, sometime the upward ascent must be 
begun. It is destined that finally, however 
late, unto God, the Good, "every knee shall 
bend and every tongue confess. " "The zvay 
of the ungodly shall perish." This statement 
of the psalmist is literally true. Not the un- 
godly but his way shall perish. But let no 
parent, no teacher, no individual be unaware 
or lose sight of the terrific strain, pain, waste 
and woe which having that "way" entails. 
Righteousness and unrighteousness both pay 
high dividends. The difference in the quality 
of these dividends is the varying differences 
between the lives on the different planes of 
existence. It is as true as the most rigid theo- 
logian has ever taught that a man's place in 
the after-life is determined by his life here, 



76 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

but it is not true that it is fixed by that life. 
There is no stagnation, fixity, anywhere. Con- 
stant motion, continual vibration, eternal pro- 
gression, these are God's law. 

It has been argued by some that because 
Jesus said to the repentant thief, "This day 
shalt thou be with me in paradise" that death- 
bed repentance places one directly in heaven. 
Death-bed repentance, like any other-time re- 
pentance, is far better than no repentance at 
all, for it is the aspiration upward, the fresh 
stand of the soul, which enables the liberated 
man to begin his after-death experiences at 
a higher level and under better circumstances 
than would have been his had there been no 
such aspiration and new stand. But as here 
the youth who repents of his idleness at school 
and resolves to be more diligent is given there- 
by a higher mental position and better cir- 
cumstances under which to work towards and 
finally into college, but cannot enter college 
before he has earned its privileges, so the thus 
tardy repentant man cannot at once have a 
place among those who for years have been 
diligent in generating love and giving unsel- 
fish service. To be "in paradise" with Jesus 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 77 

was to be in one of those realms where the 
good that He was always doing, the help He 
was always rendering, the comfort He was al- 
ways bestowing, might be taken up and made 
the means by which the former thief might, 
without delay, begin to win his way to loftier 
heights. 

Most comforting is the knowledge that in 
this astral realm the exact state of a man's 
heart is seen and exact justice done him. 
Jesus declared to the cold, formal, selfish and 
self righteous ones who heard Him that even 
the harlots would enter the kingdom of heaven 
before them, and assured others that unto 
many of them who should cry unto Him, Lord 
Lord, that He should reply that He never 
knew them and should bid them depart. It is 
no fairy tale or mere opinion that the woman 
who sold her body as the only means of keep- 
ing starvation or cold or nakedness from loved 
ones; the man who drank but who was al- 
ways helpful, big hearted, generous ; the thief 
who stole that his theft might relieve misery 
will, in that realm where motive, feeling, in- 
tention are carefully weighed and taken into 
account, have a more desirable place than one 



78 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

whose absorption in himself and lack of inter- 
est in others alone keep him unsullied. Lack 
of love, dearth of service, unresponsiveness to 
the needs of others are, on every plane, the 
cardinal sins, or mistakes. 

"That man is earning a beautiful mansion 
in the skies," said a lady to a friend, speaking 
of one, in many respects not a lovely char- 
acter, who was habitually taking abandoned, 
wounded, starving cats and dogs from the 
streets and ministering to them in the best 
way of which he could conceive. 

Many a man and many a woman rated very 
low in the world's estimation is assured a de- 
sirable place and enjoyable conditions in the 
astral realms by devotion to and self sacri- 
ficing effort for family, friend or cause. Love 
is God, the very essence of God, and is, there- 
fore, power itself, magetism itself, that which 
accomplishes in part or wholly according to its 
volume and intensity. It is literally the one 
thing that, used as a means of bringing about 
anything, "never faileth." 

In ascending a high mountain the path 
winds round and round, even occasionally for 
the time being going downward, and it some- 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 79 

times seems as though no progress were be- 
ing made toward the top, but, in reality, every 
circle brings one nearer to the summit. So 
in ascending the spiral curves of evolution the 
soul that for purposes of awakening and 
cleansing is held in that realm which the Cath- 
olics call purgatory and we the lower astral 
world seems to be making no upward ascent, 
but in reality it is always preparing itself, even 
by that temporary downward plunge, for the 
final, though sometimes infinitely delayed, re- 
demption which the Love that cannot be 
denied and the Power that cannot be balked 
have ordained and that upward sweep which 
is the great Urge on to Perfection. 



VII. 

Wtyat Ar* % £tm>0 at <&ljilfcmt? 

^^^ HOSE whom the gods love die young." 
V^y It might well be that these words 
were written by one who knew what 
joy dying brought to the young. Of all 
those who pass out, however happy they 
may be, the children are undoubtedly the 
happiest. Over and over some heart-broken 
mother has exclaimed, "My poor little dar- 
ling, out there alone and without me!" 
Nothing could be farther from the truth than 
that any child is alone in the astral world or 
without its mother. It may be truly said that 
in, apparently, losing one mother it has gained 
many, for the mothers who welcome little ones 
to the other side and tenderly and wisely care 
for them are legion. As a matter of fact the 
child never loses its mother at all, and the only 
reason that its going away seems a loss to her 
is that her physical brain will not bring 
through the memory of the hours she spends 
with it during what is to her night and to it 
day. Every earthly night her longing for it 
will as surely draw her to it in sleep as the 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 81 

longing of a lover will draw him to his be- 
loved as soon as he is free to seek her. And 
when both mother and child are free in their 
spirit bodies their intercourse is as real and 
free and natural as it ever was in this life. 

Here many a mother goes to outside daily 
tasks leaving her baby at a day nursery, call- 
ing for it in the evening, and it is in her arms 
or by her side during the night. After its 
passing out she is just as surely with it during 
what is her night and its day, caring for it, 
teaching it, joining in its games. 

As on earth the nursery attendants care for 
and amuse the children left in their charge, 
so in the astral world whenever a child lacks 
the ministration of its earthly mother it is 
cared for in every needed way by its foster 
mothers and always plentiful attendants. 

The conditions and facilities of that world 
being so superior to those of this, and the 
freed childish souls so impressionable and re- 
sponsive, bubbling, joyous happiness is the 
result. Think what the astral realm means to 
these little ones. Millions of them were 
among the dwellers in city slums, half -covered 
by dirty clothing, half-fed with cheap and un- 



83 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

wholesome food, weakened by disease engen- 
dered by filth, vermin and general depriva- 
tion: the waifs and strays of humanity to 
whom a week among clean surroundings and 
green fields and with abundant and tasty food, 
or an opportunity to be taken on a trip by a 
floating hospital was the one event which, in 
anticipation or retrospection, colored their 
year. Imagine these where there is no cold 
or hunger or nakedness or disease, lovingly 
cared for in beautiful homes, taught by wise 
and tender instructors, having for playgrounds 
wide, green, lovely spaces in the vivid, invig- 
orating atmosphere, for playfellows scores of 
other happy, healthy children, for playthings 
hundreds of things never procurable here, but 
easily called into being in that place where 
thought force fashions so quickly and per- 
fectly objects of desire. Here a gorgeous 
chariot with prancing horses to draw it ; there 
a boat and a lake on which to float it ; again a 
just-the-right-size ball and bat or a big beau- 
teous doll in marvelous costume in a wonder- 
ful cradle or carriage, all come temporarily 
into shape for the use and delight of these 
riotously happy little ones. For every tiny 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 83 

baby which goes out tender mother-arms are 
waiting, and nothing is wanting for its com- 
fort and happiness. 

Children in the earth-life, like adults, are 
often lonely, and even oftener than in the case 
of the adult it is for the same cause. To say 
that even the best circumstanced person, 
adult or child, is continually happy or with- 
out loneliness is to state something which the 
experience of every one of us decisively con- 
tradicts. Children, thank God, enjoy more 
care-free days and heart-light hours than 
adults, but their times of dearth and desola- 
tion are certain and very real and many times 
inexplicable as, in numerous instances, are the 
"blue" attacks and vague longings which 
sometimes beset the most happily placed indi- 
viduals. Some of you will remember when 
you were taken to a boarding school, or went 
to college, or began new work in a strange 
town. You were there for a good reason; to 
gain knowledge to perfect yourself in some- 
thing in which you had been deficient. You 
acquiesced in the arrangement and were 
thankful for the privileges afforded you. You 
were, nevertheless, always remembering the 



84 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

old home and the familiar places, always long- 
ing if not for the old haunts for their essence, 
their familiar flavor, the something that made 
you at home. Now, none of us are at home 
on this planet. To every one of us it is a school 
in which we have been placed, a strange land 
in which we have taken up our residence that 
we may learn needed lessons, become expert 
in something in which we were deficient. We 
acquiesce and are greatful for our privileges. 
The dense, slow-vibrating matter of our 
earthly brain-stuff does not permit us to dis- 
tinctly remember what the soul's home is like, 
but we have vague, unformed realizations of 
it, and, for the most part unconsciously, we 
miss the essence, the flavor, the something that 
made the soul at home and will again make it 
at home. 

Often the child's inexplicable sadness and 
much of his gladness are caused by his living 
very largely in two worlds. Just as one who 
has recently left home has the far fresher 
memory of that home and the much keener 
touch with those left behind, so the soul so 
recently come from the higher realms retains 
the infinitely more vivid recollection and more 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 85 

realistic sense of communion with the inhabit- 
ants of that sphere. 

A three-year-old girl living in a Maine 
country town one evening stood by a window 
gazing out into a perfectly dark yard and, 
detail by detail and with frequent exclama- 
tions of admiration and delight, described a 
fancy ball with all its wonderful settings and 
accessories and the rich and varied costumes 
of those who were taking part therein. The 
aunt to whom she was speaking, who was a 
picturesque and vivid writer and had seen 
much of society and its functions, declared 
that she could never have made so accurate 
and glowing a picture of any scene as was 
presented by this baby who had never on earth 
seen even a country dance. 

It not infrequently happens that a child is 
seen evidently playing and talking with com- 
panions who are entirely invisible to the earth- 
ly friends about her. Such a child was a six- 
year-old girl called Pearl. She did not seek 
the children of the neighborhood in which she 
lived, evidently quite satisfied with the com- 
panionship of invisible "Rosa" and "Edith*" 
who, apparently, seldom missed a day in com- 



86 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

ing to her, to whom she talked and to whose 
remarks — heard only by herself — she an- 
swered as characteristically and naturally as 
any child speaks and replies to its playfellows. 
"Why, mother/' she one day exclaimed in an 
indignant tone, "you shut the door in Rosa's 
and Edith's faces. Didn't you see them com- 
ing it?" In Mrs. Burnett's wonderful story 
'The Secret Garden" there is given a picture 
of this childish two-world communion which 
is very charming. 

Children are often reproved, sometimes 
punished, for telling "stories" when they ar£ 
only speaking of things which they really see 
and hear, but which are not visible or audible 
to those elders who are longer away from their 
parent realms and far more deeply emmeshed 
in dense and deadening matter. A good many 
interesting facts might be gathered from 
children were they fairly and sensibly under- 
stood, reasoned with and questioned instead of 
doubted, blamed or punished for being more 
perceptive and clear sighted than those about 
them. It often occurs that a child whose 
seeming improvisations make him unusually 
interesting becomes dull and commonplace as 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 87 

he grows into more advanced youth; when 
his memory of other-world things becomes 
less keen and his brain less responsive to 
other-world vibrations. As it would not be so 
much of a change for a boy who had been at 
school for only a short time to return home 
as it would for his older brother who had been 
for some time in college, so it is not so much 
of a change for a child to return to the other 
realms as it is for an older person. 

With the children who are seemingly born 
only to die, who go out of life as mere infants 
or in tender years, it is the rule rather than 
the exception that they stay in the other 
world only a short time and then return to 
earth, often in the same family. Countless 
mothers tell their children of little brothers or 
sisters who "are in heaven" while those same 
baby souls are wearing the bodies of the 
listening ones. Often a child who is named 
for its "dead" brother or sister is simply giv- 
en back his or her own name. 

Sometimes a child, as well as an occasional 
grown person, remembers one or more of its 
former incarnations in the body. On unim- 
peachable authority a story is told of a girl of 



88 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

four who while one day walking in Santa Bar- 
bara, California, with her parents ran up to 
a stranger and called him "papa." Although 
her father was with her she could not be per- 
suaded that the stranger was not also her pa- 
pa. "Don't you remember," she said to him, 
"the little house with the trees all 'round it? 
And you whipped me for going across the 
water on a big tree. Mama was sick and you 
went away, and I don't remember any more." 
Then the bewildered stranger told how some 
years before he had built a log house in an 
Australian forest, in which he had lived with 
his wife and child. When the child was able 
to walk one day he discovered her trying to 
cross a nearby stream on a tree which had 
fallen across it. To prevent a repetition of this 
dangerous attempt he had lightly chastised 
her. When the child was five years old the 
mother became so ill of fever that he had left 
the two and had started for the nearest set- 
tlement in search of a doctor. A murder had 
been committed in a neighboring place. Of- 
ficers searching the woods for the murderer 
came upon the hastening man and arrested 
him on suspicion. In spite of his explanations 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 89 

and protests he was taken to England for ex- 
amination. When he was released and hur- 
ried to his home he found his wife and child 
dead of starvation. He abandoned the place, 
and five years later found himself in the town 
where he was claimed by the little one as 
father. 

Among the tests applied to the memory of 
the child was that of placing before her a 
large number of photographs among which 
was one of the stranger's wife. On taking 
this into her hand the child at once exclaimed, 
"O, papa, here's mama!" A Theosophist 
friend was consulted, and brought before the 
puzzled trio the theory and strong proofs of 
reincarnation, or repeated appearances on 
earth in different bodies, and henceforth the 
child enjoyed the ministrations and generosity 
of two earthly fathers. 

Some children who go out remain in the 
spiritual realms and grow up there into man- 
hood and womanhood, enjoying the natural 
life and opportunities of those planes as nat- 
urally and surely as growing children and 
youth enjoy these things here. They do not 
forget or grow strange to their parents or 



90 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

brothers and sisters, as almost inevitably do 
children or youths here who are for years sep- 
arated from their families, because they are so 
often with them while their physical bodies 
are asleep. A man who went out some four 
years ago was found by a reliable investigator 
by whom he sent word to his wife that their 
daughter, who had died as an infant, was now 
a beautiful young lady and his constant guide, 
companion and teacher. 

There, as here, children love to "help," to 
be of use. And very efficient and delightful 
help they become. They early learn to instruct, 
to comfort, to entertain, to add largely and 
continually to the satisfaction and enjoyment 
of their glorious worlds, and thus to find a 
never-ceasing increase in the loveliness of their 
bodies and their lives. When the time comes, 
and many signs indicate that it is on the way, 
that the "ether-veils" between the physical and 
astral worlds are dispersed and things in those 
after-spheres are seen as they are, no mother 
will weep over her baby's grave for she will 
no longer lack constant and conscious com- 
munication with her dear one or fail of utter 
certainty that it is indeed "well with the child." 



VIII. 
JBijat is** U all Mtwx? 

DOTHING is more apparent than that it 
means, all of it, the carrying out of the 
Great Designer's plan for man's evolu- 
tion into perfection. It means that the earthly 
life which, while we live it, seems all-impor- 
tant, is to the ordinarily good person the short- 
est, the hardest and the most sorrowful of all 
the seasons which he spends upon the different 
planes. It is what may be called the gymnas- 
ium of the school through whose grades he is 
passing, in which he pulls and pushes and lifts 
weights and runs and wrestles to bring him- 
self into fit condition to go out as a healthier, 
more normal and adequate individual. 

As during one's school course he spends far 
less time in the gymnasium than in the class 
and study-rooms where instruction is given 
and knowledge acquired, so man's time in this 
earthly sphere is of far briefer duration than 
it is on those more adequate, higher, happier 
planes. 

He comes, during his evolution, again and 
again, the number depending upon the ad- 



92 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

vancement he makes each time he is here. A 
certain young man was graduated from Har- 
vard at seventeen; another was graduated at 
thirty. Some people make character work so 
rapidly towards perfection during their lives 
here that far fewer incarnations are required 
than for many another to fit them for the state 
where they will not need to return again, but 
may remain in the worlds and live and love 
and serve in kingdoms of whose glories and 
joys the earthly imagination can form no 
conception. 

We sometimes hear the quotation, "I shall 
not pass this way again." Very occasionally 
there is one dwelling here who after his pres- 
ent incarnation will, indeed, not pass this way 
again, but for one of that order there are mil- 
lions who will pass this away again not once 
but many times. As the student who does not 
master the studies of the primary school must, 
for term after term, be returned there until he 
is fitted for the grammar grade, where he must 
be sent month after month till he is able to en- 
ter the high school in which he must go over 
and over his tasks until he is ready for college, 
so one returns again and again to the same or 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 93 

similar position and environment until he mas- 
ters what he was put there to learn and is 
fitted to move on to something higher and 
more desirable. Almost invariably, however, 
even if one does not during one earth-life 
learn its needed lesson with such completeness 
as to enable him in his next to enter a different 
life and environment, he has partially learned 
it and is moved, in his succeeding incarnation, 
to a higher and more satisfying position in 
that same kind of life and environment, as 
two men may be poor but one live among more 
intellectual and interesting associates and in 
a better house and neighborhood than the 
other. It is a long stride, or series of strides, 
from the atom to divinity, but it always leads 
Home. 

Is the unperfected man arbitrarily forced 
back to earth again and again until he gains 
perfection? No. Free will obtains in all the 
spheres. But just as many a man after leav- 
ing school has, with the increased mentality 
and more seasoned thought of maturity, rea- 
lized what benefits would accrue to himself 
and to others by his return to his unfinished 
tasks, and has voluntary chosen to again take 



94 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

them up, so, with the wider outlook and 
broader wisdom which come with the freer 
and less trammeled understanding of the after 
spheres, unperfected men, seeing the advan- 
tages to themselves and others which will 
result from their returning and working at 
the unfinished task of perfecting themselves, 
choose to come. 

There are on the earth a number of souls 
who have perfected themselves and for whose 
own sake there was no need that they should 
return, but, who, seeing the travail and trou- 
bles of this world, its sore need of teachers, 
helpers, comforters, chose to relinquish the 
glory, the ease, the joys of high celestial spaces 
and companionship that they might become the 
servers and savers of their struggling brothers 
and sisters. Among these, able as they are to 
function consciously on several planes, with 
one of which they are as familiar as with the 
other, are a number of our informers concern- 
ing the people, things and conditions of those 
regions where dwell our so-called dead. Some 
of these are never known among men for what 
they really are, but are recognized as "saints," 
"the salt of the earth," people whom no one 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 95 

understands but all revere and love. Others 
are known as Masters and have as their 
earthly dwellings, from which they can go 
out at will in their spirit bodies and to any 
desired place, different secluded communities 
or Lodges. 

Many a soul, granting reincarnation to be 
true, has been haunted by the fear that the de- 
parted one whose presence would alone make 
heaven might before his arrival have taken 
another earthly body. Only once in millions 
of cases would this be so. In this one case 
there would be a most unusual and pressing 
reason why the reincarnating ego should re- 
turn to earth within a short time after leaving 
it. These occasions are so rare as to be prac- 
tically negligible. We are credibly informed 
that the time which a soul passes between the 
seasons — so brief in comparison — on earth 
averages from twelve to fifteen hundred 
years. Of course the time for some is less, 
for others more than this, but for all adults 
it many times exceeds the longest life on earth. 

Another thought which renders anxious 
many a heart is that before the going out of 
the earthly one the loved dead may have moved 



96 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

on to a sphere so far beyond the astral that 
he will not be there to give the welcome or 
share the gladness which without him could 
never have real richness and flavor. Let such 
a one fully understand that real love between 
any two souls would inevitably draw them to- 
gether though one had ascended to the sphere 
of the archangels and the other had just en- 
tered the astral realms. As a beloved subject 
might not be privileged to enter the domains 
of a monarch, but that monarch could enter 
and find rare delight in the humble dwelling 
of the subject, so though, except in rare cases, 
those who have lately left the earth body may 
not yet enter the higher spheres, a dweller 
there, may, and when love attracts does, enter 
and find happiness and enjoyment in that in- 
termediate realm through which he has him- 
self passed and to which his dear one has now 
come. Those who have attained to the higher 
spheres may visit all realms below them. But a 
very large majority of people remain on the 
astral plane through the number of years 
which cover the lifetime of their friends, and 
thus on their coming are there to welcome and 
companion them. 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 97 

Real, deep, unselfish love between any two 
people, or among a group of people, will not 
only inevitably draw them together in the af- 
ter-worlds, but in repeated earth incarnations 
will again and again unite them as brother 
and sister, husband and wife, devoted friends, 
partners in business, associates in professions, 
or in some other intimate relation. Undoubt- 
edly between such lovers as the Brownings, 
such friends as the poet Tennyson and that 
Hallam of whom he so sorrowfully and won- 
derfully sung in "In Memorium," Madame de 
Stael and Madame Recamier, and thousands 
of unknown and unsung ones, there will be, 
over and over again, close earth relations. 
These statements about repeated associations 
in different lives are not mere guesses or con- 
jectures, but certainly proved facts. Thus we 
see what Whittier gave forth an absolutely 
literal and certified truth when he declared 
that 

Life is ever lord of death, 

And Love can never lose its own. 

Farther along in evolution we shall remem- 
ber our different incarnations in earthly 
bodies, the causes for them and the circum- 



98 THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 

stances attending them. Some highly evolved 
souls do this now. 

And so the meaning of it all is not life 
which ends in negation and death, but a con- 
tinual unfolding and ongoing to never-ending 
life, finally perfect life. And there is a mean- 
ing more precious still without which unend- 
ing life would only mean unending and intol- 
erable sense of loss, longing and sorrow : a 
final state of consciousness which literally 
disarms and vanquishes that "last enemy" 
death who will never again be able to rob us, 
even temporarily, of the companionship of our 
own, for our finer vibrations, our developed 
spiritual sight, our perfected spiritual hearing 
will never lose them from view or be obliged 
to allow them to stray beyond the place where 
we may hold converse with them. 

It means an ordered universe in which, as 
surely, as gradually, as perfectly as from the 
slight gathering of star-dust there emerges the 
glowing planet, man from his original bit of 
protoplasm, through a systematic chain of 
lives, -emerges into a glorified, glorious, god- 
like existence, with godlike knowledge, god- 
like wisdom, godlike power, godlike hap- 



THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR DEAD 99 

piness. This, and this only, is the inevit- 
able course of man, accelerated or retarded 
by his own wish, will, and endeavors, ac- 
cording to the verdict gathered from many 
parts of the earth by those "ministering 
angels/' literally those "just men made per- 
fect/' who have sacrificed heavenly bliss, as 
did the Lord of all, that in divine service they 
might, as they have done before, lose their 
lives and find them. They speak, and we re- 
peat, things that they know. They picture and 
we repicture, not merely things as the human 
heart wishes they might be, but as they are. 
Realize the truth about your so-called dead 
and let your hearts rejoice, and help theirs, 
which have, perhaps, been troubled by your 
trouble, depressed by your depression, held 
near the earth by your refusal or failure to 
lift yourself up into lighter air, to yet more 
rejoice and go freely and joyfully on to those 
heights to which, one glad day, with the old 
familiar smile, the same warm handclasp, the 
characteristic manner, these vitally-alive, nat- 
urally environed, naturally- employed dear 
ones will welcome you. 



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